What I learned today

Today I learned a number of valuable life lessons. I'm going to share them with you, in no particular order, in hopes that I can enrich all of your lives:

1) Next time you go to a restaurant and the server asks you what you want, tell them this: "Go back, ask the chef what (s)he wants to make, and I'll have that". I did that tonight and got an awesome southwestern shrimp scampi with pasta type deal. The chef was happy, the waitress was intrigued, and I was the talk of the restaurant (plus everyone kept oogling my food and being like "Dang that looks good. He never makes that for us!"). Do stuff to it.

2) Downtown Portland looks like downtown Pittsburgh, but automatically cooler than pittsburgh.

3) Speaking of the Pacific Northwest, I learned today that the lanes on the road have nothing to do with how fast you want to travel. People here drive willy nilly whatever speed they want, wait, whatever SLOW speed they want. You can get in the left lane to pass, but some old crotch is going to be there going 34 mph just because he feels like he should. While this is incredibly frustrating, it does present the driver with a new, more fun game: How much can I weave in and out of traffic without getting into an accident and without getting mothereffed up and down by all these dang hippies. You should try it.

4) I found out today that nice guys finish last. Not new right? Right, big deal. What I did learn is that whereas nice guys do finish last (me being a nice guy, I'm used to it), there are still people who appreciate the nice guy. If you're going to stay with the race metaphor, even when nice guys finish last there are always those people at the end of the race, still cheering you on, still telling you that you're an awesome runner, and who still maintain that you are the best person in the race. That's a comforting feeling, and I had the distict pleasure of having someone in my corner for a change today. Hang in there kids.

5) I got yelled at by a homeless guy today who told me to hug my friend Amanda. He was like "HEY!! HEEEYYYYY!!!" so I look over and then he points with his mangled dirty finger and says "GIVE HER A HUG!!!". So I did. I'm not one to make a bum cross. Bum cross hahahaha

6) Mt. Rainier hates me. I drive around for a good 45 minutes today JUST trying to get a good photo of Mt. Ranier, but everywhere I went the view sucked. What I came to realize was actually that Mt. Ranier was playing hide and seek with me. Yeah, you heard me right. Mt. Ranier kept eluding me, I kid you not! I could not find a good place to stop and take a picture where the mountain was in plain sight! I finally just gave up and started to drive home. As I was driving down interstate 5, I caught a glimpse in my rear view mirror of Mt. Ranier laughing at me, because he thought that he had won the hide and seek game. Well guess what? HE DIDN'T!! I pulled over on the side of this 5 lane highway to snap a pic of stupid Mt. Ranier and I WON! It's actally an awesome picture, too bad I almost died getting it. What did I learn? I'm better at hide and seek than the biggest mountain in America!!!